[cloudmountain]

I remember learning about Jewish life.
One thing was that everyone got married. A girl HAD to leave her home and enter the home of her husband. An average family generally couldn't support single daughters.
A man also HAD to get married and bring in a wife to help HIS mother, a MOST important fixture in a son's household.
So, sometimes people DID marry and stay celibate. Her husband would support her and she would be the wife in almost every way.

I THINK I remember correctly.

[Mercat]

My grandfather was raised by what was then called a bachelor farmer and his maiden sister. Large families were the norm but this 2 year old’s mother had died giving birth to the youngest of, I think, 10 children. The rest were fostered out to the oldest children and aunts and uncles but the father, my great grandfather, moved from West Virginia to Missouri to live with his best friend from the Civil War, George Sheppard. But in big families there were often siblings who did not get married. Often they had helped raise the younger siblings and weren’t interested in having a big family. Sometimes they took care of the parents or an older sibling. This same family - my grandmother was cared for by her younger sister, the maiden aunt.

I read somewhere that Mary was a consecrated virgin who had been raised largely at the Temple where she helped create and repair the many robes and curtains required in the rituals.